FINA members in the extraordinary congress of the organization, with 71.5% of the vote in favor of the new rules on gender mainstreaming, decided that only transgender people who have undergone gender reassignment before the age of 12 can participate in women’s swimming competitions.
“It’s not encouraging people to undergo gender reassignment before the age of 12. Scientists are now saying that gender reassignment after puberty provides benefits in terms of physical ability that are unfair,” said James Pierce, a spokesman for FINA President Hussein Al-Musalam.
“Gender reassignment is not possible in most countries until the age of 11 and will hopefully not allow it to be allowed. In essence, it is said that people who have undergone gender reassignment have some advantage in competing,” he added.
The congress has also announced that FINA will try to introduce a new category of open competitions, on which a separate working group will work for the next six months to find the most effective way to implement it.
“Nobody knows right now how it will really work. The competition will have to involve a lot of different people, including transgender people, so we need to work it all out now,” Pierce said.
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